


in his bright radiance

by Nimravidae



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: But Between Crowley and some Flowers, Garden Fucking, Listen it's just a lot of love, M/M, Overhead Conversations, Softness, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Tenderness, Top Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-11-02 06:04:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20646665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimravidae/pseuds/Nimravidae
Summary: In the South Downs Cottage, nine years after the events at Tadfield Airbase -- one angel and one demon have fallen into a very simple and very unbroken routine.When Aziraphale changes things up, he stumbles upon Crowley in the middle of his own worried confession.(AKA Crowley is an anxiety wreck and Aziraphale is here to love him)





	in his bright radiance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).

> This is the second thing I've written for draw in a month, but he deserves all the softness - all the love. 
> 
> I adore you and I heart you.
> 
> For the rest of you: self-indulgent fluffy nonseeeense

(overheard)

London. 2028.

Nine years. 

In the grand scheme of the eternal ticking of time, nine years is little more than a blink of an eye. It’s the space between a breath and a glance, the time it takes to fill a cup with the proper amount of properly cooled water. In the slowburn ache of time, wherein someone has been on Earth for six thousand and nine years, nine years itself is a little under .2%. 

That is to say, nine years is no time at all as much as it is a stretch of time that borders on unimaginable in its length and breadth. 

Nine years ago, the world did not end. Aziraphale stood on the razors edge (a more accurate description would be he stood on the head of a pin, where to move at all would mean tumbling over the edge into some terrible oblivion. A step back, falling into Heaven’s grasp with Gabriel and Michael and all Earth’s pleasures swallowed up in nuclear terror and Hellfire. A step to the left meant closing his eyes, covering his ears and pretending like nothing was happening as war tore through the seams of his life. To the right was much the same. To step forward, in this sense, was to fall somewhere where someone would catch him.)

If Aziraphale were given the choice, he’d much rather fall into a pile of angles. Knifesharp elbows and spiderweb fingers. Narrow chest-hip-waist, skinny wrists and endless legs. Tumbling against the sinuous serpentwrap of limbs coiling around him, the frozen touch of coldblooded palms cradling his cheeks. The shadowdark of crumbling-ash wings wrapping around him, breaking his descent like a featherbed in a well-used bedroom.

If given the choice, he would fall for Crowley every time. 

He had chosen the step forward, the hold-your-breath-and-settle-your-stomach feeling of stepping off the ledge and trusting Crowley (not for the first time, not even close) and for nine years, he hadn’t done so much as think to regret it. 

The world had quieted around them; it had settled into a steady rock of waves against sand, a pulse of day-to-day routine. They moved, together, from London to the South Downs. They found themselves a cottage (well, rather she found them—much in the same way a bookshop on a corner in Soho stumbled across an angel and a Bentley stole a demon) they settled in, they found their paths perfectly carved into the worn floorboards of a stable home built upon six thousand years of wanting for one.

Every morning, Crowley would wake—a sleepburred tousle of wine red and quiet grunts—and make his way to the kitchen, coffee waiting across from Aziraphale’s second cup of tea (splash of cream, no sugar. Just how he liked it, just how he’s always liked it) 

Mornings were quiet, a rose window dawn creeping over them with a settled ease. Aziraphale would talk to him, hushmurmur voice simmering just below the sound of their heartbeats. 

_I finished that book last night. (Crowley’s soft hum not dismissive, but welcoming — golden fleece eyes turned towards the window, towards the blush-stained sky, towards the morning-dew gardens) I placed some orders. I saw a Wordsworth, a first edition of something I have too many first editions of already. A book that I don’t want to read but looked in such desperate need of repair that I couldn’t stop myself. I had to fix it, had to bind it back together and press against it’s pages until it was reminded how loved it was. _

Perhaps he didn’t say that all, perhaps it was just some of it, all tangled up in the steam off his tea. 

After, Crowley would get dressed, Aziraphale would plan his day. Usually spent puttering about, reading, carefully mending the spines and pages of books that hadn’t known a careful touch in so long (_Like you. I know it, I can see it in your eyes, in the shiver of your skin. You hadn’t known Love in the moments between it all. I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am, I don’t know how to tell you how much I love you, how rich the blood that flows through my heart bleeds just for you. How to tell you so that you believe me, how to tell you so that you know in that Hellwrecked, Hellruined, Hellfucked mind of yours. _

_Years, centuries, millenia. No one touched you with care._

_I don’t know how to express how badly I need to fix that, to change that. I will touch you with love, I will touch you with care, I will cradle your heart and carry you in my chest.)_

After a stretch in his library, he would find his way to the kitchen, welding cookbooks and the tastememory of something on the back of his tongue. _Always a memory with him. Always a shared dish, the feeling of fingers brushing together over a dish in a half-distant thought of a half-distant plate. Watching Crowley a plate of dolmadakia over to him, urging him to try his Tochitură off his spoon._

He would take a while then, laying them out and paging through them to find whatever needled at his chest. Pop off to the shop if their frequently well-stocked kitchen was lacking in something here or there (often an ingredient that their little shop didn’t carry. Frequently something that Aziraphale would only find buried in a mysterious corner in the back, where even the young man working there would furrow his brow and make a noise of half-surprise as it actually rang up) 

Dinner would be done, Crowley would come back in from the garden, or from fussing with something with his car, or from doing whatever it was he spent his days doing. They’d sit there, discussing and unpacking the day behind them, discussing and unpacking the days ahead. Crowley wouldn’t make himself a plate or a bowl, but he would try the newest creation, guiding Aziraphale’s fork by his wrist. 

He’d say something sweet. _Wonderful, angel, as always _or _delicious, never know how you always manage to get it right on _or _reminds me of that night in Greece—remember that, right? With the, eh, with the goats head, yeah? _

There would be wine (red, something old and clinging to the back of his tongue. Like Crowley liked), there would be a softly-lit library, there would be hands brushing against hands, fingers interlocking. There would be Crowley’s head on Aziraphale’s thigh, there would be fingers buried in hair, wine glasses replaced with whiskey (double, on the rocks, like Crowley liked.) There would be deep breaths, poems read. Crowley would go to sleep, Aziraphale would not. He’d join him in bed, let Crowley wrap his languid limbs around him, nose buried at the nape of his neck. 

“Love you, angel,” he’d say, breathed against the whispersoft hairs, a whiskeywarm breeze sending shivers down his spine. Aziraphale would twist, nose to Crowley’s cheek for just a moment. 

“I love you too, my dear.” 

And Crowley would press closer, bodies slotting together like they were made to fit, like the delicate promise of a wedding band pressed flush against the first ring. _I love you. _He always said it again, after Crowley’s breathing evened out behind him and his arms had cycled through a tight-loose-tight-loose twist of needing and having and needing. 

_I hope you know that. I hope you believe that. I would never say it without meaning it, without the full weight of it behind me. I know my love can be quite a bit, can be a goldenfire of sparks and start to burn — I want to drench you in it, to burn Hell off your brow and Heaven off my tongue and replace it with nothing but us. You and I and the home we made and the garden you grew. _

_Please know I love you — please, you need to know. You must know. _

The night would tick on, until Aziraphale could stomach the ache of detangling himself, of watching Crowley roll onto his back, nose buried in their ashsoft sheets. 

Aziraphale would return to his library, and come the whispers of dawn, they would do it again. 

This wellworn routine etched itself into their floors, into the divots on their sofa and the familiar drags of chairs and the way their cups hung the same way every evening. To break it meant to shiver the foundations on which they had built the last nine years, to knock something loose and let it wobble at the edges of the head of a pin. Fall forward or backwards. 

It was early afternoon when Aziraphale decided to shake things up. He’d begun his day a little differently, not much but enough. Forgoing a morning of book repair, he found himself entrenched in baking (something about it was familiar, watching the yeast foam and start, digging his fingers into the dough and working it again and again and again, molding it from what feels like nothing and turning it into something else. The fold-press-fold-press of kneading into a smooth ball. The motions were unfamiliar, but the action of it was not.)

His first attempt went poorly (they sometimes do, six thousand and nine years leaves a lot of room for error. For course-correction. For fixing. You do something foolish, something that chokes in your throat and leaves you feeling weathered and sick _you storm off, you tell him you’ll never give him holy water, you don’t trust him the way you should, the way you always have before.)_

You fix it. Underworked, overproofed. (Learn to trust him, remind yourself that he’s not going to do something foolish. He’s too smart for that, too good for that.)

It’s on his second attempt, this one a well-risen if slightly lop-sided loaf, with his shirt dusted in flour and his trousers a bit ruined with dough, that he decides to upturn their routine. To give the well-balanced table a bit of a shake, a bit of a shudder. Fresh bread, butter, all arranged on a plate as he hovers around the door out of the kitchen and into the garden.

They have a routine, they have a system. A division of places not set in stone nor bound by fences or lines — but by just what they do and do not do. Aziraphale goes to the garden sometimes, he sits in the chairs they have out there and takes his lunch, he reads, enjoys a glass or two of wine, piece of fruit fresh off a tree (peaches, if it’s July, apples in September. Somewhere between, figs) — but he never goes seeking Crowley. He never goes with the intent to find him buried to his wrists in dirt and soil, he never goes to find him seething down at a cowering tomato start or a soft-willed tulip. 

The same way Crowley never comes to the library to seek Aziraphale’s attention. He comes to sit in the dull light with him, to sprawl over the sofa and lounge in the quiet companionship of silence. Six thousand years of pretending you had to spend your time alone, of putting up boundaries for the sake of boundaries, of never dancing too close to one another for fear of what your side will say — it leaves a mark, a brand. 

They need time alone, occasionally. Just to remember what it was like. 

Aziraphale’s hand hovers over the knob, wondering for far too long if this is the right option. (_Crowley doesn’t really eat, he never really needs to eat. He does it to please you, to be lovely and kind to you. He does it because he knows how important it is to you. There’s really no need to do this, the bread will be there when he comes back, it will be there when he decides to come in. You don’t need to do this.)_

His fingers curl around the summer-cool metal, pushing the door open with his heart thuddering away under his tongue. At first glance, he can’t find Crowley. Tongue-twisted and tied, he doesn’t call for him—no, he can’t whisper the words, he can’t announce his arrival the way he should. To speak it means to make it real, to speak it means to summon truth to action and upset the balance of this moment on the edge of their kitchen table — the places they meet, the places they come together. The kitchen, their bedroom. Never here. Never in the garden. _why not? Why not the garden, the garden was ours as much as theirs. The garden was the first place I saw you, the first place I knew what your eyes looked like when they caught the sun (oh how I missed them, you covered them too much, I always wanted — I never wanted to forget what that looked like. Glistening, glimmering. You have such gorgeous eyes, I would drown in them if I didn’t know you would be there to pull me back out, press your hands to my chest and breathe life back into me)_

The first step down from the concrete step, onto the little dirt path that wound, forged by Crowley’s repetitive steps, built out of their routine, of their comfort—they were tentative, ring knocking against the bottom of the plate as he tried to hold steady, tried not to shake. 

He won’t be mad, he tells himself. He won’t be upset — maybe a touch bothered, a touch startled but not upset. Never upset. 

He knows Crowley well enough, he knows the edges, knows the boundaries. He knows where not to walk, he knows what not to say, where not to broach, where not to touch (_Don’t walk past the pit where he cycles through digging out his apple tree and replanting new ones. Don’t call him nice, it makes him twitch and glance over his shoulders to see who might have heard, don’t ask him about the Fall, don’t touch the scars on his back, the places where the rest of his thousand eyes once gleamed) _

Aziraphale takes his path through the garden slowly, eyes scanning over the assortment of flowers and fruits and herbs and vegetables that Crowley urges forth from the soil. He’s always been a gardener, Aziraphale knows that, always inclined towards creation, always inclined towards breathing life into something. They’d talked about the stars, talked about the spaces between them—the places with everything and nothing colliding into one and becoming something entirely new and entirely not all at once. 

They talked _around _before, they talked in circles about who and what and where and why — only what he wanted to share, only sitting on the beach with the oceansalt lapping at their feet. Only with Aziraphale’s eyes on the sliver of the moon and Crowley’s squeezed shut and his hands hanging as fists between his knees. 

_You don’t have to— _

_I want to._

_It’s only if you’d like, you know. I don’t need to know, my dear._

_I know, angel. I want you to know. _

He never said it, but Aziraphale knew, with the stretch of the ocean bleeding into the nightpitch darkness before them. They both glimmered, they both churned—both filled with the promise of living things. 

Crowley had _always _been a gardener. 

Aziraphale finds him before Crowley notices. It’s the movement that captures him at first, drawing his eye between the branches of a rosebush, where something hunches and mutters—a sound that only once Aziraphale notices him, can he distinguish from the windwhisper of leaves. 

It’s in the space between him opening his mouth, the sharp intake of breath to announce his arrival _(nine years, it feels like nine years) _that he hears what Crowley says.

“He knows, he has to know, right? I’ve said it so many times but — right, _right, _I’ve said he he’s got to know. Plain as day.”

_Know what? _

Aziraphale’s stomach churns over the slices of bread he’d had before (the failure and the victory. No sense in only celebrating if you haven’t a chance to chew on your own mistakes) and he swallows back his greeting, lets it settle down with the flour and yeast. He peers over the top of the bush, to where Crowley is tending to some plant Aziraphale cannot identify, down on his knees with his fingers in the earth like he belongs there (he does)

He churns up a weed and tosses it aside. “I don’t know how much clearer I can be, really. I’ve — I mean I tried to tell him before, I tried to tell him for six thousand years and he didn’t get the message. Probably because I didn’t say it outright but—” another weed joins the pile and Aziraphale lowers himself down, sitting on the other side of the rosebush, plate and bread and butter all balanced on his knee. 

Crowley heaves up a sigh, and Aziraphale images him sitting back on his haunches, wiping the sweat he doesn’t need from his brow and blinking liquid gold eyes up at the glaring sun. “I don’t need to tell you this,” he says and Aziraphale bites back the _please, please say it. I need to hear you say it. _

“You know how much I love him. Pointless, innit? Telling a plant—and of course _you _can’t go telling anyone else here. It gets out I’m soft on the angel and then what? We’ll have leafrot and less than ideal fruits and so help me, if one of those fig trees produces anything less than _perfect _for one of Aziraphale’s tarts, I will turn them into mulch and sprinkle them at the base of all their friends.

Just—keep it between us, right? I—I tell him every night, and in the mornings, and sometimes when we’re just lying there it slips out. I just—” there’s a sound, metal-in-soil, like Crowley’s dug a spade into the grass for the sake of releasing a bit of tension. “Does he _know? _I don’t—I can’t show it in the way he does, I can’t crack open my vessel and let it all bleed out, dear _someone _does he let love bleed out of him.”

_Oh, dear, it’s too much, isn’t it? _Aziraphale’s hand covers his mouth, his other holds to his thrumpulse chest. _It’s too much, too much for him, too much for — _“I’ve never felt anything like it and I just can’t _match _it.” 

_Oh dear, no. _

“‘M not made of the same stuff anymore, if I spring a leak it’s all _despair and darkness and evil.” _

_No, no dear, you don’t. You stop wrapping yourself around your heart and all I feel is love. All I see glimmering back in those eyes, in the curve of your lip, in the set of your jaw. Love — I know you love me I _know _you love me. _

“I don’t blame him if he doesn’t.”

_I do, my dear, my love, I do. _

“They got to him with that, didn’t they? I’m a demon, not capable of love. Haven’t got the right parts.”

_You are, you are, you are, you are. _

“Maybe they were right.”

_Oh. _That sets that stoneball in his stomach aflame with something else. _They are not right, they were _never right. 

He stands with enough sureness, collecting the bread plate with one hand and adjusting his shirt with the other, that he can hear Crowley’s choked realization as to Aziraphale’s presence. 

“Dear,” he says, with all the firm finality of steel wrapped in silk, circling the bush to the side where Crowley had given up the pretense and just sat there, legs crossed and fingers toying with the stem of a weed.

“Aziraphale—what are you—I see you—you didn’t. I wasn’t—” Crowley doesn’t get far in his babbling. 

The plate comes to rest down in the soft grass and Aziraphale bends to a knee, fingers cupping his jaw, lips pushed to his own. _They were never right, _he tries to say, _they were never right they will never be right they will _never _be right. You are so full of love you are so full of grace and wonder and beauty — you are everything I have ever needed you are everything I have ever wanted. I love you and you love me, you know I love you and I know you love me and that is all we need. (Let me have your fears, breathe them into me and I will take them into my lungs, squeeze out the pain of your past and exhale into you nothing but love and affirmations. Let me swallow your anxiety, take it from you and hold it within the pit of myself. I will keep you safe, I will love you, I will love you, I love you) _

When they part, it’s with half-lidded eyes and wordless shifting of lips against lips and sweetfire breath wet and hot and Crowley’s fingers tangled in the mess of Aziraphale’s shirt. 

“You heard?” He croaks, after a long while. “I didn’t mean for you to hear.”

“I know, dear. I did I—I couldn’t pretend like I hadn’t.” 

Crowley pushes his forehead, sunwarm and perfect, against Aziraphale’s, slides one hand up into his hair before pulling him in for another kiss. “So you know?” He asks, between another. “That I—”

“Yes, my love. I _know.” _

“Since the Garden, since Rome and in Wessex and—” This kiss tastes like _I know, _it tastes like _I’ve always known, _it tastes like, _I loved you in the Garden, I loved you with the sun in your blackfire wings and the tanglered hair with eyes the color of things that I couldn’t even imagine existing. Things that never would have existed had you not been given those eyes. A color invented only for you, a color that should’ve been kept—secluded for you and your eyes. _

He bends Crowley back, a wave of his hand banishing the bread back to the kitchen, and kisses him into the soft grass beneath him, down into the shade of the rosebushes that secreted him and the plants that Crowley tended to. 

The next kiss said _I love you, _with Crowley’s fingers racing up Aziraphale’s stomach, rucking up his shirt to touch him and feel him and smooth his palms up the soft skin of his hips and back and sides and ribs. The one after that was _I love you _with Aziraphale’s touch creeping along the sharpcut rise and ridges of Crowley’s hips, finding their way up his narrow chest, his razorwire shoulders. 

Again, _I love you, _as they strip each other — slowly, with intent. The way humans do, baring inch by inch of flesh to the sun and the light-hidden stars (they’re always there, always with them — it’s just a matter of seeing, if they’re caught up in the wayward light of the sun) 

Aziraphale’s mouth falls to Crowley’s throat, the juncture of his throat and his neck, working teeth against flesh to urge sounds from the back of his throat—fingers scramble at his back, at his neck, at the back of his head as Aziraphale bruises his love there, a mark sealed over with a kiss and another kiss and another kiss up the length of his throat and over the rise of his jaw. _I love you, I love you, I love you. _

It’s in their lips against skin, in Crowley’s fingers curling into the bedlinen hair and staining five insistent points of desperation on Aziraphale’s arm. It’s in the way Aziraphale urges them over, rolling himself onto his back and Crowley above him (sunlit, with his hair catching the light with goldenfire sparks, with the moltenheat glow of his eyes branding every inch of Aziraphale’s skin)

It’s in the way Crowley caresses down the line of Aziraphale’s chest, the lips at his collar, his chest, his stomach, his hips, his thighs. It’s the way he kisses down to the side of his ankle and back up again, each brush languid and _savoring. _Each kiss, each touch, each brush of skin against skin another whispered promise—another vow.

He strings Aziraphale out, the way he loves to be strung out, he caresses him the way he loves to be caressed. _I feel it, _he wants to say, _I feel how much you love me, I promise. I swear, my dear boy, all I feel is loved by you. _

But all he can manage are high-caught moans, whimpers stretching past his lips as Crowley finds his way back up, slick finger teasing at his hole (slickhot already with wayward kisses, with Crowley’s tongue and lips pushing against him, taunting him with a promise of more, more, more). He pushes one into him, Aziraphale’s legs already tensing with the wash of sensation that comes with Crowley’s touch, and nearly immediately afterwards takes teeth to throat. 

_Oh, oh—”Oh.” _Stuck in the breathless, wordless, pleasure of it, it’s all Aziraphale can do, can say, can think. _Oh. _Torn out of his throat on a gasp as Crowley _bites _against him, kissing a bruise to mirror his own as he twists a second finger into Aziraphale’s body. 

It’s wordless, breathless, as they move together, as Aziraphale’s hands find the firepitch hair and the back of his neck, holding him close, moving him so that he can leave another brand, another mark. 

_I love you. _

_I love you too, angel. _

Crowley withdraws his fingers, pushes into him. Slickwet lips dragging searing trails up his throat, his jaw, his chin, to seal back at his lips, to push his tongue past them. Aziraphale yields and gives as Crowley yields and gives in return. Crowley sinks deep into him, pushing his way with a steady care until they’re flush together, tongue sliding behind Aziraphale’s teeth. He’s never felt so taken, so had, so fully consumed from every insistant point of contact. 

If he had the wherewithal, the capacity to think of anything but the hot slide of Crowley inside him, anything but the slide of tongue over tongue and lips over lips and the pleasureburn of being slowly, slowly, slowly, fucked so deeply it feels like Crowley might just melt into him, with Aziraphale’s legs wrapped around that broomstick waist and one hand caught in his hair, holding them flush at the lips—all of it just to be closer, closer.

_Closer, and I’ll show you how much I love you. Closer, let me reflect your love, let me show you how much I see it — how every morning when you look between the sunrise and the coffee and me, the way you catch the light and glow and shine. Let me show you, let me show you all the ways I know you love me, all the ways I love you back._

When they can’t kiss, when their panting breaks between the keening whines and the gasp-caught moans, they stay there—Aziraphale tries to watch. He fights every urge to close his eyes and lose himself in the pleasure of it all as Crowley twists their hips, digs a hand under Aziraphale to lift him just right and angle just right.

He wants to watch, watch Crowley’s lips curl against his own clenched teeth, watch the way his eyes squeeze shut as he pushes harder, faster, harder. Aziraphale knows, knows when to work him, when to slide a hand further up against his head, when to bite at his lips and give him an urging tug, a touch, a hand, insisting, _come on now, love, right there — yes, keep going, my dear, my love, come on, come for me. _

Crowley comes with a broken gasp, every other beat curving around another taste of Aziraphale’s name. He lurches forward, burying his face in the crook of his neck and rocking with slow movements, bursts pushing deep inside him, filling Aziraphale in just the way he loves. 

The windwild limbs that grasp him unwind slowly, just enough for Crowley to lean back, just enough for him to kiss him again—soft, sweet, and slow. 

And then again, at the corner of his mouth, at his jaw, at his cheek. 

Crowley slides out of him (Aziraphale tries not to think about how empty he feels, about how he’d much rather Crowley just stayed there. _There’s no need love, just stay, just be inside me, be around me. _But he knows it wouldn’t do, Crowley wouldn’t let him go unpleased) and slides down him. Another trail of kisses, but this one ending at the head of Aziraphale’s cock—flushed and aching and stickywet already as Crowley darts and smart tongue over it. 

_They were never right, _Aziraphale thinks, without much thought. _I’ve never felt so loved. _

Nine years ago, such a thought might’ve wrenched Aziraphale away from his happiness, away from these summerheat pleasures of Crowley’s mouth swallowing him down with a careful ease. Nine years ago, to think that anyone but Her loved him, that he could be loved so deeply, so rawly, so entirely by anyone but Her—it would have spelled his doom, his collapse. He would have pulled back from Crowley’s touch _(pulled back entirely, locked himself away. Goodbye dear chap, another hundred years seperated. I’ll pretend I’m busy you’ll pretend you’re busy we won’t talk about it, we won’t discuss it) _

But it is not nine years ago, it is not nine years ago and this is not a story about fear and this is not a story about Falling from grace. 

Crowley swallows him town, he works every inch of Aziraphale he knows how—from all the memory and practice of six thousand years of falling in love and nine years of acting on it. When they’ve finished, Aziraphale a pleasurepool across the grass and Crowley’s cheek pillowed against his chest, they lie in a blistered silence for a long while.

“Why did you come out here anyway?” Crowley asks, turning his face to the space between Aziraphale’s chest and his collar. “Don’t usually come to this part of the garden.”

“I made fresh bread. Thought I’d bring you a slice, and—” Well. _Well. _He sniffs, rubs down the length of Crowley’s back once or twice. “I missed you.”

“You saw me this morning, angel.”

_It’s not the same, not always. I’ve missed you when you’ve left me for just a moment, I’ve missed you when you left me for a century. _“I know, dear.”

He nearly expects some line, some sharp little barb, some soft-edged commentary. It doesn’t come. Instead, Crowley pulls a deep breath in through his nose, sliding his leg up over Aziraphale’s hips. “‘S the bread inside?”

“Yes.” 

“We should go try it.” 

Neither makes a move to get up, neither does much of anything. Aziraphale’s hand settles low on his back. “Perhaps.” Perhaps. Perhaps they should, perhaps they shouldn’t. In the time it takes Crowley to lift his head, to press his lips to the space under Aziraphale’s jaw, they’ve made their decision. 

He rolls back over, fitting himself into Aziraphale’s lap and kissing him proper. 

The bread will still be there, still steam-warm and fresh, when they decide to leave their garden. 

Whenever that may be. 


End file.
